I began a conversation with a couple of people with Habitat for Humanity with regard to volunteering opportunities for members of Bay City After 6. As part of this conversation, I was asked if I would be willing to help Habitat out by shooting on a few days while they were working on their 2009 neighborhood revitalization project.

Most people are aware of Habitat’s main focus which is helping build and provide homes for people. Rather than focus all of their efforts on a single home, the neighborhood project gives Habitat the opportunity to work with a number of homes in a given area. The neighborhood they chose is in Bay City’s south end, near Rexer-Jablonski Park (named for two Bay City Police Officers killed in the line of duty). The neighborhood, while not being a bad area, is home to a number of houses in various states of disrepair.

Coordinating their efforts with Dow Chemical and other volunteer organizations, Habitat had the chance to make a real difference in this neighborhood.

I’m not sure exactly how many homes were worked on over the course of the eight-day project, but the work performed ranged from paint jobs, to gutter repair, porch replacement, landscaping and so forth.

One part of the project was to clean up the landscaping at Rexer-Jablonski Park, which served as a home base for the entire project.

As part of any Habitat project, the families whose homes are being worked on are required to help pitch in with the work. As you can see below, no family member was too small or too young to help out.

Okay…maybe some of them were too young and too small. The trio below did, however, help eat donuts. Everybody did their part.

I heard a great story from one of the people with Habitat. Family members were so filled with the goodwill the week created that many of them took time out to help out on other neighbors’ homes.

On the final day of the project, Mayor Charles M. Brunner came and said a few words about the difference that one full week of giving back to the community made. Not just to the homes themselves, but to the people who live in the neighborhood. And it showed in the number of families who chose to attend the closing ceremony and share their thanks and their stories.

As a great parting touch, each home that Habitat worked on was given two chairs for the front porch to encourage neighbors to sit out on their porch and spend some time talking to their neighbors. The best part is that the neighborhood has been using the chairs and is coming together as a real community. They’ve even planned a neighborhood picnic for the near future.

Habitat is already working on its 2010 neighborhood revitalization project, but there is a big challenge in front of them. This year, they were able to count on Dow Chemical providing a lot of volunteers. Next year, however, Dow Chemical will be working on a Habitat project in Midland. This means that to have the same sort of impact, Habitat will have to recruit a LOT of local volunteers. I am making it my personal mission to do whatever I can to help get the word out about this project.

I’ll be turning to friends, family members, clients and readers of this blog to take a few hours out of their week to pitch in and give back to some people who can use a helping hand. Watch this blog for details as they become available.

RadioShack recently decided that they are a little too cool for their own name. Wanting to distance themselves from their pocket-protector past of selling diodes and cathodes and other stuff that ended with -odes, they needed something fresh that would really sell their new forward-thinking product lines of laptops, cell phones, etc. They enlisted the creative firm of Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners of Sausalito, California (read the end of the post for a quick note about BSSP). Together, RadioShack and BSSP came up with the company’s new creative platform—THE SHACK. I don’t know about you, but does ‘shack’ conjure up new and innovative?

Lee Applebaum, RadioShack’s Chief Marketing Officer says, “We’re contemporizing the way we want people to think about our brand. THE SHACK speaks to consumers in a fresh, new voice and distinctive creative look that reinforces RadioShack’s authority in innovative products, leading brands and knowledgeable, helpful associates.”

To me THE SHACK does not communicate innovation or contemporary or fresh or new. It says Clampetts. It says Ma and Pa Kettle.

Contrary to other reports, RadioShack isn’t actually changing their name. They’ll still be RadioShack, but now we’re supposed to call them THE SHACK (sort of like Sean Combs—aka Puff Daddy, aka P. Diddy, aka Puffy, aka Diddy). Here is the splash page to THE SHACK SUMMER NETOGETHER event coming up in less than 24 hours.

Referring to RadioShack as THE SHACK is okay, I guess, but it seems like they’re trying just a little too hard to be cool. It’s kind of like a dorky kid in school wearing parachute pants and an Izod with the collar popped at the same time. Give it up, kid, you’re not fooling anybody. Is there is some sort of hierarchy of cool in retail electronics sales? I figure that Best Buy is probably as cool as that sort of thing gets, but even then, bright blue shirts and khakis? You have to ask yourself, when you’re looking up at Best Buy on the cool-0-meter, how far from the pack have you wandered?

Added Applbaum, “When a brand becomes a friend, it often gets a nickname.” Yes, this is true, but you gave yourself the nickname. Do any of you have a friend who demands that you call him by his new nickname? Is there anybody less cool than the friend that gave himself a nickname? That isn’t how it works.

Most importantly, let’s not forget to acknowledge the 7-foot, 1-inch elephant in the room—the world already has an internationally famous brand using the name.

Nothing personal, Shack, but you will NEVER be as cool as Shaq.

Author’s note: I hadn’t heard of BSSP before today. Or, rather, I may have read about them but didn’t really know anything about them. If you have a few minutes (seriously, you’ll need some time) take the time to check out their site. It’s REALLY slow to load, but it’s well worth it. There is a lot to see at their site so be sure to stop by and check it out.

Author’s note: This is something I started to writing, but couldn’t finish, a few weeks ago. It isn’t quite as timely as I would like it to be, but I still wanted to put this out there. In the interest of full discloser, I do some work for the Saginaw Spirit, the Ontario Hockey League team which Garber  owns and was instrumental in bringing to Saginaw. Even though I do some work for the Spirit and we have exchanged hellos at a couple of games, we have never actually met and I’m sure he doesn’t know who I am.

Author’s Note #2: I did not take the above photo, I found it online and borrowed it.

Anybody living in the Tri-Cities can speak firsthand about the effects of the economic downturn and the rapidly eroding job market. It’s really been pretty brutal in this part of the state. Largely due to a decade-long trend of auto-industry job losses, Saginaw’s unemployment rate is over 20%, which is pretty insane.

We’ve all heard about the federal government’s bailout of the auto industry as well as the cash-for-clunkers program. Love these programs or not, they gave the auto manufacturers a chance to reorganize their business and rethink their business practices. As part of their reorganization, GM decided to eliminate many of its dealerships across the country, which does make some sense. There are markets in the nation with multiple dealerships within just a few miles of one another. The dealership closure was a big part of their plan as GM headed into bankruptcy court. What baffles me is what the criteria were for closing a dealership.

Garber Buick is an icon in Saginaw. Established in 1907 by the Garber family, Garber Buick had survived the Great Depression, two World Wars and several economic downturns throughout its 100-plus year history. At one point early in their history, the Garber family—who have long been very closely associated with GM—helped Buick make its payroll when they were short on cash. Currently, even with the economy in Saginaw being pretty rough for years and years, Garber Buick has remained one of Buick’s top-selling franchises. On top of all of that, they receive consistently very high marks in customer service. In short, Garber Buick is a model franchise.

So when the news came that GM was going to cut Garber Buick from its franchisee list, people in the area got up in arms. Buick was planning on cutting off one of the top performing franchises in the country. How does a move like that make even an ounce of sense? With decisions like this, it’s really easy to see how GM got themselves into their current predicament. Ouija boards could probably produce better results than GM’s bloated-and-out-of-touch management structure.

As I said, people around here got pretty fired up and started a letter-writing campaign to GM and I was one of the many who took the time to write. Even though I don’t know Dick Garber personally, I know a lot about him and the way he runs his business. it doesn’t take a genius to see that this was a stupid decision and I wanted to let GM management know what a bunch of disloyal jackasses they are (I didn’t actually use the word ‘jackasses’ but I did lecture them about loyalty). I don’t know how many people took the time to write, I only know that I was one of many.

Very often, when people see someone who has more than them get taken down a peg, they take a certain amount of satisfaction in it. This schadenfreude (isn’t that a great word?) is a kind of sick spectator sport—taking pleasure in the suffering of others. But that’s not what you saw in this case. What you saw was a community come together and instead of snickering behind his back, they rallied behind him. Even if the letters fell on deaf (and very dumb) ears at GM, the outpouring of support was something special and unique to the Tri-Cities. We do take care of each other and we showed our true colors here.

Congratulations to Dick Garber, all of the employees, friends and relatives who are stakeholders in the Garber organization, and to the community of Saginaw which could ill-afford another gut-punch like this.

Man, did I make a bad choice in starting a design business. I should have gone the route that Nick Swinmurn did and start an online shoe store instead.

Zappos.com was acquired by Amazon.com today for a deal worth around $850 million (actually, with the bump in Amazon stock, the deal is now worth closer to $900M).

Zappos is a great example of creating a brand and redefining an industry. According to their website, Swinmurn started the company after a frustrating search for shoes. One store would have the style, but not in his size. Another would have the right size, but in a different color. And searching online was not much better.

The idea was simple…sell lots of shoes. How do you get people to start buying shoes online? You carry lots of styles and product lines and you carry them in all sizes and colors. And to get over the hurdle of shipping costs, you ship the shoes for free. And from there an internet giant was born.

Congratulations, Zappos.

Burger King is no stranger to controversy in its advertising. Cripsin Porter + Bogusky have pushed the envelope a few times, but they actually are not responsible for the ad above.

This ad is for the BK Super Seven Incher, a new sandwich available in Singapore. The King used a Singapore firm to create the ad above, which uses clear sexual imagery and language (“Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled…”). I have to admit that I find the ad kind of funny, but I can also recognize why people are all up-in-arms over it.

With all of the hubbub over the ad, I think that we’re missing one thing—who in the hell needs a 7-inch Burger King hamburger? Isn’t that, like, 2000 calories or something? That’s just stupid.

As a bonus, here is one of BK’s previous close-to-the-egde ads, created by Montreal’s Bleublancrouge.